Feature Channels: Psychology and Psychiatry

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New model described in the journal CHAOS represents how the mind processes sequential memory and may help understand psychiatric disorders

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In research presented at IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics, researchers, from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory suggest an algorithm can predict human intuition better than us humans.

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If a young woman’s first sexual experience involves alcohol, she is more likely to be at risk for problems such as sexual assault, and this risk may persist in her future, new research finds.

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If Plato were alive today, what would he think of our modern times? Specifically, how would he react to a modern world where secularism and religious fundamentalism are growing further apart?

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Mystical experiences are frequently labeled as indescribable or ineffable. However, new research suggests that when prompted, people who have had a mystical, spiritual or religious experience can describe the event.

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A new University of Iowa study finds conversations parents have with their children after a serious injury help young people internalize safety values, a process similar to how a child develops a conscience.

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From the workplace to the boardroom, research shows that adult bullying takes many forms. October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month. Dr. Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, North Dakota State University, Fargo, has researched the topic of workplace bullying for more than a decade. Her book, “Adult Bullying – A Nasty Piece of Work: Translating a Decade of Research on Non-Sexual Harassment, Psychological Terror, Mobbing and Emotional Abuse on the Job," explains what workplace bullying is; how much of it occurs; what individuals can do; and how organizations can address it.

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Ignoring children’s emotional outbursts is a strategy commonly employed by parents with a wide range of psychological know-how, drawing on their intuition, family tradition, modeling, or simple desperation. Despite its widespread use, parental ignoring has previously received little attention or assessment by child development professionals.

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A team of UCLA scientists has found that brain areas linked to social behaviors are both underdeveloped and insufficiently networked in youths with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to study participants without ASD.

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In today's American politics, it might seem impossible to craft effective political messages that reach across the aisle on hot-button issues like same-sex marriage, national health insurance and military spending. But, based on new research by Stanford sociologist Robb Willer, there's a way to craft messages that could lead to politicians finding common ground.

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UAB clinical psychologist says those who survived the Oregon mass shootings or other difficult events should engage with a team of mental health professionals.

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University of Notre Dame researcher Sidney D’Mello and colleagues are researching the “mind wandering” phenomena and developing a software system that can both detect when a person’s focus shifts from the task at hand and get that person to refocus.

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Bioengineers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a mathematical algorithm that can “see” your intention while performing an ordinary action like reaching for a cup or driving straight up a road -- even if the action is interrupted.

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Parents who are anxious and emotional can impact their children's violent video game play, according to new research from Iowa State University. Warm and restrictive parents successfully limited children’s play. However, anxious parents had the opposite effect.

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People who think they know it all — or a lot -- may be on to something, according to a Baylor University study. Researchers had theorized that “intellectual humility” — having an accurate or moderate view of one’s intelligence and being open to criticism and ideas — would correlate with academic grades, but that was not the case.

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Labels and messages could encourage responsible use of digital devices and raise awareness of potential side effects.

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Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine found that people with anorexia nervosa have very different microbial communities inside their guts compared to healthy individuals and that this bacterial imbalance is associated with some of the psychological symptoms related to the eating disorder.

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Throughout history, scholars and researchers have tried to identify the one key reason that people are attracted to religion. But in a new book, a psychologist suggests that religion attracts followers because it satisfies all of the 16 basic desires that humans share.

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Teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

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How happy you are may have something to do with who you know—and where you come from. Lijun Song, assistant professor of sociology, set out to discover whether knowing high-status people helped or harmed mental health, using depressive symptoms as a proxy. Her findings appear in the July 2015 issue of Social Science and Medicine.

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Media advisory on Oregon school shooting.

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Student and faculty researchers at Florida State University have found that mindfully washing dishes calms the mind and decreases stress.

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Elementary schoolchildren often dawdle between activities during the school day, losing valuable instructional time in the process. New University of Georgia research has found a way to reclaim these lost minutes and make the transition to a new subject fun while increasing student focus.

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Developmental psychologists long have debated whether individuals volunteer and help others because they are sympathetic or whether they are sympathetic because they are prosocial. Now, new research from the University of Missouri helps clarify some of the confusion, which could lead to better interventions to promote positive behaviors in adolescents and clues as to what makes some individuals altruistic.

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Chimpanzees’ personality traits are linked to the anatomy of specific brain structures, according to researchers at Georgia State University, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and University of Copenhagen.

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Monkeys perceive visual illusions in the same way great apes and humans see them, according to researchers at Georgia State University.

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Suicide rates gradually have been increasing for years despite improved treatments for depression. Doctors want those at risk of harming themselves to know there is hope — including a new treatment that may relieve suicidal wishes in people with depression.

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Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? In the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE, a team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose—to make the person they interact with smile in return. To verify their findings, researchers programmed a toddler-like robot to behave like the babies they studied and had the robot interact with undergraduate students.

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Individuals who blame karma for their poor health have more pain and worse physical and mental health, according to a new study from University of Missouri researchers. Targeted interventions to counteract negative spiritual beliefs could help some individuals decrease pain and improve their overall health, the researchers said.

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Think that you are special because you are creative? Well, you are not alone, and there may be some serious consequences especially if you believe that creativity is rare. A new study by Lynne Vincent, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and Maryam Kouchaki, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, demonstrates that believing that you are a creative person can create feelings of entitlement when you think that creativity is rare and valuable. That feeling of entitlement can be costly for you and your organization as it can cause you to be dishonest.

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Think that you are special because you are creative? Well, you are not alone, and there may be some serious consequences especially if you believe that creativity is rare. A new study by Lynne Vincent, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and Maryam Kouchaki, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, demonstrates that believing that you are a creative person can create feelings of entitlement when you think that creativity is rare and valuable. That feeling of entitlement can be costly for you and your organization as it can cause you to be dishonest.

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Using feedback that incorporates goals or incentives and leverages new media and technology appears to be the best way to get people to cut back on their energy use, according to researchers who analyzed dozens of studies on feedback’s effectiveness in energy conservation. The research appears in the journal Psychological Bulletin, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

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For adults, memories tend to fade with time. But a new study has shown that there are circumstances under which the opposite is true for small children: they can remember a piece of information better days later than they can on the day they first learned it.

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An elevated infant death rate may be linked to mourning experienced by women in the months before they become pregnant, reports a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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The study found that healthy sisters of women suffering from eating disorders suffered from higher levels of depressive symptoms stemming from the strained relationship between the two. “During treatment maximum attention should be given to the relationship between the two sisters, strengthening it and transforming it from a negative, competitive interaction to one of support,” said Prof. Yael Letzer from the University of Haifa who led the research together with Prof. Ruth Katz and Keren Berger

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A study of Internet pornography users suggests a person’s own feeling of being addicted to online pornography drives mental health distress, not the pornography itself. Researcher Joshua Grubbs, a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, said the finding adds a fresh perspective to commonly held concerns that Internet pornography can be a threat to mental health. The research, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, suggests that feeling addicted to Internet pornography is associated with depression, anger, and anxiety, but that actual use of pornography is not.

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Rutgers psychologist discusses the dangers of orthorexia

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At 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, September 10 the Airline Quality Report will be presented live and reporters will be able to engage with one of the study's co-authors.

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A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans’ (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies.

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Would a color by any other name be thought of in the same way, regardless of the language used to describe it? According to new research, the answer is yes.

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Switzerland is the best place in the world for older people to live, closely followed by Norway and Sweden, according to a new report from HelpAge International, working in partnership with the University of Southampton, UK.

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“Gaydar” — the purported ability to infer whether people are gay or straight based on their appearance — seemed to get a scientific boost from a 2008 study that concluded people could accurately guess someone’s sexual orientation based on photographs of their faces. In a new paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenge what they call “the gaydar myth.”

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A new study conducted by the University of Warwick links being born premature with low wages.

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Babies’ neural responses to morally charged scenarios are influenced by their parents’ attitudes toward justice, new research from the University of Chicago shows.

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Those with borderline personality disorder a mental illness marked by unstable moods, often experience trouble maintaining interpersonal relationships. New research from the University of Georgia indicates that this may have to do with lowered brain activity in regions important for empathy in individuals with borderline personality traits.

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Studies show that the way a person makes decisions is among the main factors that determines whether they are protected from or vulnerable to suicide. This particular trait is partially shared with family members. Therapies could be adapted to target decision-making.

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